The wide-set stripes carved onto my plates are influenced by Rosanjin’s[1] square and rectangular plates. The attraction of this plate is a pool of glaze between lines. It somehow reminded me of fossils that are buried and aged under the ground for hundreds of years and then reappear on the surface of earth again.

I used these wide carving lines in the circular plates as the round form of the earth and my own wood ash glaze on top of crackly engobe. They are sometimes blue, but both look very watery, imagining something once alive in glory but sleeping statically under the water. Other lives grow and die above it and life circulates. Another range in the ‘Fossil Plates’ is plain but the surface is heavily crackled and it imitates the surface of ground in the desert. Once the ground is died away, the green eventually comes back and covers on the ground.

[1]KitaōjiRosanjin (北大路魯山人?, March 23, 1883 – December 21, 1959) was the pseudonym for a noted artist and epicure during the early to mid-Shōwa period of Japan. His real name was FusajirōKitaōji, but he is best known by his artistic name, Rosanjin. A man of many talents, Rosanjin was also a calligrapher, ceramicist, engraver, painter, lacquer artist and restaurateur.